


initiation

by epsiloneridani



Category: Halo (Video Games) & Related Fandoms
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-12-09
Updated: 2019-12-09
Packaged: 2021-02-26 05:15:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,972
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21728125
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/epsiloneridani/pseuds/epsiloneridani
Summary: A fireteam is no place for a Headhunter.But then, no one bothered to ask Jun’s opinion before they assigned him to it.
Comments: 8
Kudos: 35





	initiation

**Author's Note:**

> **Warnings: blood, war/violence, language, intense/graphic descriptions of violence (not out of line with what’s shown/present in canon, but it’s still there and described as such so please be aware)**

He doesn’t do teams.

“It’s an honor to be chosen for Noble,” his CO tells him, all smiles as he slides him the paperwork and shakes his hand and sees him to the transport that’ll take him from Echo Outpost to the _Dawn_. “You’ve done well, Spartan.”

Jun bites back a scoff and off a sharp nod. An honor. Right.

Headhunters have no place on a fireteam.

“Welcome to Noble,” the Commander says, and Jun nods along, spine stiff, jaw set, and pretends he’s chosen this transfer, pretends the selection isn’t an insult to his ability, pretends it doesn’t feel like a slap to the face. He’s lost partners but never a mission; he’s fallen but never failed, so why in the hell was his file ever in the pool?

“Thank you, sir,” he says.

Carter’s eyes are boring blue. “I’ve read your file,” he says. “All of it.”

He doesn’t have the clearance but rumor has it that’s sort of Noble’s style. Jun arches an eyebrow. “Sir?”

“We’re a _team_ ,” he says firmly. “You’ve worked in two-man squads before but you’ve also spent a lot of time on your own.”

That’s how headhunting works. He almost says it and then doesn’t. Carter’s gaze is unrelenting. “The lone wolf stuff stays here,” he orders. “Clear?”

“Clear, sir,” Jun says and hopes it sounds clipped and professional and not biting.

He doesn’t do teams.

Noble is brand new, save Carter and his second. The _Dawn_ puts the fireteam up in its barracks, three rooms, three double bunks, and Jun drops his duffle down on the top cot just as his roommate steps through the door with his own gear.

Jorge is a mountain of a man but he moves with a grace that defies his frame. He pauses and glances at the bunk, at Jun and his hand on the edge, frozen. “It’s Jun, yes?” he asks, flashing the halfway hesitant grin of someone who already knows but is trying to start a conversation.

Friendliness. Fake. Maybe he’s honed the smile to seem sincere. Jun blinks at him. “Yeah,” he offers at last. “That’s me.”

Jorge smiles pleasantly; his eyes flit to the other bunk, back up, and Jun braces for the barrage of questions that doesn’t come. Jorge just waves at the lower bed. “Do you mind if I—”

Jun swings up onto his bunk smoothly, out of sight, out of mind, out of the way. The cot below creaks, creaks, and then settles. There’s only the soft sound of breathing and he’s sure for a moment that Jorge has already gone to sleep.

No such luck.

“Did I ever introduce myself?”

“Your name is Evan Jorge,” Jun supplies crisply. “I read the briefing.”

Jorge snorts, a soft puff of air that manages to sound contemplative, not rude. He doesn’t say anything more and Jun flops onto his pillow and props his hands behind his head and stares at the ceiling until Jorge’s back to even inhales.

Jorge is one of the Twos. How in the hell someone who’s seen all he’s seen and done all he’s done can sleep soundly is beyond him. Jun scowls at the ceiling. It’s silent save his roommate’s breath and for all of its steadiness it does nothing to lull him under. It’s not something he should be able to hear.

He doesn’t do teams.

Carter’s training drags them to the gym at four so Jun gets up at three. Jorge is motionless, turned away when he slips silently to the floor but the second the door hisses open he’s bolt upright, alert and attentive and not totally awake.

“It’s just me,” Jun offers, a careful whisper, like having a stranger two feet from you in the dead of dawn is any more comforting.

Jorge’s eyes shift in the darkness until they find his outline. “Right,” he mumbles, like he’s talking to himself, rolling over, taut, maybe trembling. “Right.”

His breaths stutter but don’t smooth. He’s still awake, maybe won’t go back to sleep. Jun hesitates, hovering in the doorway. What’s he supposed to say?

He doesn’t do _friends_.

Carter’s already in the gym by the time he slips in at quarter past. It’s a ghost town at this hour, unoccupied save the commander beating the living hell out of a punching bag. He doesn’t notice the door open. He doesn’t slow down.

“Leave him be.”

It’s clipped, accented, New Harmonian. Kat materializes beside him, arms folded, jaw clenched. “Let him work it out,” she reiterates firmly and Jun steps back. The others arrive fifteen minutes early, an eternity later, and Carter finally steps away from the bag. His hands are wrapped or they’d be bloody; there’s a steely glint in his eye.

“On the line, Noble.”

The workout is hell, designed to force them to rely on one another and not their own strength. They sprint, they climb, they leap, they charge, and they do it all as a team. Whatever their specialty Spartans are trained first in group warfare.

It doesn’t mean he has to like it.

They’re heaving for breath by the time Carter calls an end. None of them will be the first to fall. Carter glances at them, lined up but standing as far apart as they can, and Jun swears he twitches. Kat, at his side through it all, clasps his wrist – a flicker, a flash – and some of the tension corded through his shoulders eases away.

“Back here at twelve hundred,” their Commander orders, and then they’re free for the next five hours. Jun ducks out the door after the others, wandering the halls until they’ve vacated the locker room and he doesn’t have to interact with them. His legs ache. His arms burn.

He hasn’t been in this much pain from training since Onyx.

They meet at oh-four, at twelve, and at eighteen hundred, day in and day out for two weeks. It’s relentless; no matter how flawlessly they execute their task or how well a drill flows, it’s never enough.

Carter cannot be appeased.

Jun bounces the racquetball he commandeered from the rec room off the ceiling. It’s a repetitive _thwack_ , but if Jorge is annoyed by it he has yet to say so.

“What are we even _doing?_ ” Jun snorts, louder than he meant to. The bed below him creaks, Jorge shifting, and Jun hopes for one eternal breath that he hasn’t heard him.

“Training,” Jorge answers. “Teams take time to adjust to one another. I think the Commander just wants to be ready.”

“Since when do fireteams sit on their hands for two weeks?”

“Since this one was just rebuilt.”

Jun rolls his eyes, catches the ball and squeezes it. “Two _weeks_ ,” he says through gritted teeth, “is an eternity.”

Jorge is quiet for a beat. “Rest while you can,” he says a long moment later, and there’s a note of aching knowledge behind his words, old grief and worn loss.

Jun quirks a brow he can’t see. The ball rolls in his hand and he snaps it off the ceiling. Bounce. Catch. Flick. Bounce. Repeat.

“You’re restless for a sniper,” Jorge says softly and Jun rolls his eyes.

“I sit still when I have a reason to.”

He doesn’t get an answer.

It’s a relief when a mission comes through: the Covenant are moving on a planet that’s a little too close to the system’s UNSC stronghold. Kill the battle group’s prophet, cut off the leadership’s head, cause enough disarray to give the base a fighting chance for a tactical response, and maybe they rally enough to keep the system out of the Covenant’s claws. Jun wonders briefly when and how the UNSC managed to intercept a communiqué of that significance and decides he doesn’t care.

They’re finally moving.

The Pelican drops Noble six klicks from the city and they hike through the jungle and make camp in a cave at the base of a cliff, two kilometers from the target that’ll be on-site exactly fifteen hours from now. They’re immobile for four hours, sleeping in two hour shifts with two lookouts up high and one on the ground.

Jorge is covering the base. That leaves him with Thom.

He’s been chipper and chatty during training but he’s quiet and careful now, edging as far away from the chasm as he can. Maybe he’s afraid of heights. Jun tugs his helmet off and scoots so his legs dangle into infinity. Thom physically recoils.

Definitely afraid of heights.

The city is silent on the horizon, blacked out so the bombers screaming overhead can’t hit it easily. They’re safe for now but they must be so scared, huddling in their homes and curling up around one another, whimpering desperate prayers and pleading to be spared. The Covenant hover high above, sweeping, searching. They can’t stay hidden forever.

And they don’t.

The first plasma blast finds purchase on the outskirts, a plume of fluid flame and ardent ash, and in a second it’s a massacre. The banshees swoop down, screeching low, specters of carnage and chaos; another strike follows the first, the fire rises, and Jun’s heart falls. They’re too far away to hear the screams but the air reeks of death. The city’s only defense was a thermal cloak that kept its people hidden from forces in low orbit; they have no weapons, no military. There’re civilians there – families, children.

War doesn’t care about collateral.

“We should be doing something,” Thom spits, biting and acrid.

It’s automatic, a short snap: “That’d tip them off. We’d lose our shot at the target.”

“Is one prophet really worth a _city?_ ”

He can’t answer that. No one can. “We couldn’t have saved them,” Jun says instead, and it rings hollowly in his chest. “We kill the prophet, though, and we might save the system.”

Thom falls silent, staring into oblivion. The banshees swoop, the banshees soar, and far from them, the fire roars. The city burns, a searing sunset in the starless sky. Jun brushes it off and away but his fingers wind more tightly around his rifle. There’s an ancient ache in his chest, a phantom pain he feels but can never place.

“How do you think we’re going to die?”

It comes out a murmur, a mutter under his breath, but in the deathly silence it’s louder than he means it to be. Thom’s head whips around and he stares for a long moment. “That’s a pretty morbid question coming from you,” he says at last. “Why do you ask?”

Jun shrugs.

“Seriously. I thought you were supposed to be the optimistic one.”

He scoffs. “ _No_. I’m pretty sure that’s going to be Jorge.”

“…right.”

He’s spent so long learning the language of masked movement and morbid meaning sometimes he forgets it’s a skill most other Spartans don’t develop. “We haven’t been a team that long,” he says. “You’ll pick up on it eventually.”

The city is a geyser of screaming sparks.

Kat, Carter, and Emile relieve them at watch and Jun lies awake listening to the others breathe. Jorge is even and controlled. Thom is not.

There’s a halo of sunset fire just beyond the cave’s entrance.

“We should have done something,” Thom says suddenly, and though he’s turned away with his helmet in place Jun can see the accusation twist his face. “I don’t give a _damn_ about the prophet. We should’ve done something.”

Jun doesn’t answer.

“I know you heard me,” Thom says. There’s a tremor to his voice that ripples into rage. “‘We couldn’t have saved them.’ How in the _hell_ can you say that?”

“Are you going to rest or are you going to talk?” Jun shoots back shortly.

“Those were people, Jun.”

“We have a mission to complete.”

“ _People_.”

“People die.”

“We should have _done_ something.”

“We are. We’re taking out a prophet.”

“You’re a cold bastard,” Thom snaps, a harsh whisper that pulses with muted ire. “You know that?”

Jun doesn’t answer. Thom scoffs. There’s scuffing, Six shifting further away in the cave, and then – blessed silence.

The prophet’s ship is on-site on-time exactly as planned. Jun’s set up high above in the most stable structure still mostly-standing; the others have formed a perimeter around the landing zone. If this goes sideways, they’re containment.

“Damn, they’re stupid,” Jun says.

There’s silence on the other end of the comm. line. “The Covenant,” Jun elaborates dryly. “Setting up the procession. It’s like they’re drawing us a map straight to the prophet.”

There’s an empty beat. “Is this tactically relevant information, Noble Three?” Carter asks.

“Just an observation, sir.”

“Try to keep them to a minimum, rifleman. This op’s comm silent.”

Of course it is.

The Elites are at the rear. The Grunts and Jackals, of course, march at its head, meandering little morons wandering into a freshly scorched war zone. They strut rank and file then split down the middle and separate to either side to form a center route. Jun grits his teeth and follows their path with his scope.

“They’re definitely planning a welcome party.”

The Phantom’s ramp hisses open and down with a plume of steam he’s almost sure is for effect and not from hydraulics. The honor guard strides down first; they’re flanked closely by a montage of Brutes, seven columns of puffed chests and rotting sneers. The prophet is at the center of the procession, perched on his pretentious hover-chair and floating along like he hasn’t a care in the world, like the city isn’t smoldering ash around him.

There’s motion on Jun’s tracker, five blinking dots that tell him Kat and Emile have moved around to two points at the back of their circular perimeter, Carter and Jorge are on approach from either side, and Thom’s hidden somewhere in the path of the parade. If Jun can’t get a clear shot from his perch, they’ll fire on the prophet and the enemy will cascade into chaos. Not much time to get out, not with that many people.

“I’ve got movement to the east, Commander,” Jun growls. Nothing ever goes according to plan anyway. “Lots of it. Looks like another platoon.”

“Repeat? Did you say another platoon?”

“I take it back. It’s bigger than a platoon,” Jun says grimly. The dots blur together on his radar, a blob that signals an oncoming onslaught. At least fifty ground units, maybe support for the current parade, maybe some ceremonial group. Not something they were prepared for. Not something ONI knew about.

This op was supposed to be simple.

The clouds tremble, the earth shakes, and the Phantoms descend from the sky in a riptide of roaring wrath. There’re five of them, more than the briefing said would be on-site, more than one fireteam can divert and destroy on such short notice. They’re followed a swarm of banshees – and two DDS-class carriers.

“What in the hell are carriers doing here?” Jun snarls under his breath. They haven’t seen him, not yet, and with any luck they won’t. He still has a shot. They can still finish this.

If he was out here alone, extraction would be a hell of a lot easier.

“We take out the prophet now and they’ll be on us in seconds,” Jorge says, a voice for the urgency ticking in his chest.

“We don’t,” Kat cuts in, “and this entire system’s screwed.”

“I say we go for it,” Emile interjects and even without seeing him Jun knows he tenses, taut and ready for battle: always so quick to the fight. “We can take ‘em, Commander.”

Carter’s silent for a long moment. “On my mark, take the shot, Jun,” he orders. “The rest of you, fall back to his position. We won’t have long to make it to the evac site after the prophet’s down.”

Teams complicate _everything_.

“Yes, _sir_.”

“… _mark_.”

The shot cracks, thunder in the thick humidity, and Jun scrambles down the cliff-face before they can zero in on his location. Four of the others are already there, positioned to repel anything that comes charging into the clearing.

“Where’s the Commander?” Jun asks shortly, slinging the rifle onto his back and whipping out a magnum instead. Kat’s tense, turned away from them and scanning the surroundings. The Covenant are in a disarray on his scanner, spreading out across the area like blood from a wound. There’re harsh roars in the distance, war-cries, rallying calls.

And the decisive snap of a DMR.

“Get to the evac site!” Carter barks through the static and the snarls. “I’ll meet you there.”

“We don’t leave our people behind,” Kat shoots back. “How close are you?”

“Not close enough.”

“We’ll come to you.”

“Get to the evac site. You won’t get another chance at it.”

“Not without you,” she repeats harshly, and the desperation ticking behind her tone reminds Jun that she and Carter are the last surviving members of Noble’s original squad. Not even two months ago, this new team didn’t even exist. “The op’s shot.”

“The op’s _done_. Move out, Two. I’m right behind you.”

“We got incoming,” Emile says, blade in hand, and Jun whirls around just in time to rap off three shots into a Brute’s skull. It falls, still twitching, still surprised by its sudden demise, and Jun slides into his slot in the formation.

The cliff is at the rear, the forest at the front, and with the enemy in pursuit there’s no making a break for it into the foliage that spreads back around the outcropping: they’d be gunned down in seconds.

Their first fight shouldn’t be a final stand.

Carter’s comm’s still on. There’s shattered gunfire and stuttering breaths that tell them he’s hit.

“How far?” Kat demands.

“…close.”’

“ _How close?_ ”

“Close enough.”

There’s a friendly blip on his radar and Jun whips toward it just in time to catch sight of Carter, surrounded but stumbling and struggling on. His armor’s peppered with plasma scars but he makes it to their makeshift circle and takes his position.

“Good to have you back,” Thom says.

“Noble Actual, we need evac,” Carter rasps instead of answering. “Noble Actual, this is Sierra-259, Noble needs immediate evac. Do you copy?”

“Sierra-259, we copy. Evac on the way.”

Simple op. Sure.

Jorge’s machine gun rattles in Jun’s peripheral and while it’s efficient at taking out large groups of enemies at a few meters, it’s close to useless at hand-to-hand range. Jorge is turned away, focusing fire on an incoming platoon. He doesn’t see the Elite Commander outflanking him. He can’t.

Jun lunges; his gauntlet catches the Elite in the side of the head. It’s stunned for a brief and precious moment and he hits its jaw, slashes its throat, and slams its skull into the cliff’s razor edge. It struggles weakly, its energy sword is in its hand, inactivated, unused, and Jun rips his blade through its brainstem before it has the chance to ignite. It slumps. Dead.

“Thanks,” Jorge bites out, and Jun scoffs his reply. He’s still blind at his six and so that’s where Jun plants his feet and stays.

Whatever their specialty Spartans are trained first in group warfare.

“Noble One, Noble One, this is Noble Actual. We have incoming air support. Sit tight. They’ll clear you an LZ for extraction.”

The sky is on fire, blazing and broken by the screaming shroud. Whatever they are, they’re too quick to be seen, rapid and raging and wrought by some maelstrom deep in ONI’s core. Pelicans don’t have that agility. Fighters lack the endurance to enter the atmosphere.

“Thought Sabers were a rumor,” Emile growls, and Carter coughs. He’s moving sluggishly, stumbling along in stuttering steps and half-stopped swings. He’s not going to make it much longer.

“Commander!”

Kat’s half a second too late. The grenades soars from the Elite’s hand and sears itself into Carter’s chestplate and the only thing he can do is fall forward on it, curled around himself to contain the explosion.

Plasma’s not kind to armor. It’s even worse on skin.

It’s silent and then it’s shattered and everything is white and ringing. There’s a new enemy group charging out of the forest, Jorge’s chain gun is chattering, and Noble Actual’s on the comm: _stay back and hang on, Noble, help’s on the way_.

“Biofoam, now,” Kat barks, sliding in front of Carter’s fallen form: a shield, a savior. “Emile!”

Emile’s there in an instant, tugging Carter’s helmet away so he can breathe and tearing the biofoam canister out of the compartment on his back. Carter’s convulsing and coughing, heaving and writhing and not staying still so Jun jerks the chain gun from Jorge and snarls, “Go help them.”

The canister hisses, part of the wound seals, and Carter screams. Jorge is there to hold him down while Emile reloads and fires, reloads and fires until whatever the plasma didn’t cauterize is caked in sealant.

That’s gotta hurt like hell.

“Boss, stay with us,” Kat growls. “Evac’s en route. Two minutes.”

Two minutes is too long.

Thom’s a fierce fury at Jun’s side. The onslaught’s slowed but not stopped; the Covenant have no qualms about sacrifice, after all: they’re not the ones under siege. Jun grits his teeth and drags down another Elite. There’s a sick pit in his stomach, churning acid.

For the first time all mission, Carter’s absolutely silent.

“He’s not going to make it,” Jun mutters, and in the chaos only Thom hears him. He can’t see his face but he knows he scowls.

"He’ll be _fine_.”

The enemy rallies, the enemy charges, and they fall back to surround the desperate circle. Evac can’t land in the clearing when it’s so heavily fortified.

Maybe Carter’s not the only one that doesn’t make it.

They’re firing ferociously and then they’re flinging their arms up to shield themselves from the blast. Jun hacks at the dust that rattles in through the filters. The forest is on fire. Half of the trees in the vicinity are leveled. It’s like someone swooped down through the treacherous crags of the cliff at their rear and took an extreme and exacting shot at the advancing platoon.

The timing would’ve had to be perfect – or else they’d barrel straight into the storm of their own salvation.

“Who in the hell is that crazy bastard?” Thom heaves. There’re roaring engines above them, the Saber coming in for another pass, and without anything left to execute, Jun can only clutch the chain gun and stare.

The Saber loops around, whirling into a screeching dive that sends it straight at the Covenant. It’s a suicide run, the trees and the surrounding cliffs don’t leave enough space and if you’re close enough to hit the Covvies from this angle then you’re close enough to blow yourself to hell with your own missile, but the pilot waits, waits, a breath – a pulsing beat.

Not yet.

Not yet.

Not yet.

They don’t pull up at the last possible second. They don’t pull up at all. The Saber fires, fires, and roars through the Covenant line, twisting and twirling around the ravaged trees and cutting the uppercut so close at the cliff Jun swears there’s the _scree_ of separating steel.

No one’s that good.

The next two passes are just as impossibly harrowing. The next two passes are the only reason the Pelican can drop in long enough to drag them out of hell.

“Crazy bastard,” Thom forces, when they’re pressed back in their seats tearing for the _Dawn_ in orbit. “Did you _see_ —”

Carter’s surrounded by medics just a few feet away. Kat’s silent, helmet on and staring into space. Her hands are wound into one another. Carter’s not moving. Carter’s not breathing. The medics slide a mask over his face and Kat’s hands twitch, tormented. Jorge’s gentle grasp lands on her shoulder and she shrugs it off.

Even in armor, she’s shaking.

“Yeah,” Jun answers without really thinking. “Yeah, I saw.”

“ _Hell_ of a pilot.”

Hell of a mission.

Carter’s shipped off to critical the second they step foot on the _Dawn_. As soon as he’s out of armor and swept through medical Jun slips off to the medbay’s waiting wing, hovering in front of the door for a second longer than he should.

He doesn’t do teams.

Whatever their specialty Spartans are trained first in group warfare.

Jun ducks into the door and drops into the closest seat. Jorge gives him a half-hearted smile, just a shadow, and drops a hand onto his shoulder. It’s a gesture of comfort, though he’s not sure for who, and Jun allows it for a half a second and then shrugs it off.

“Cleared?” Jorge asks a long moment later.

Obviously. “Yeah,” Jun answers. Kat’s not sitting, just pacing in the corner: taut and trembling and terribly restless. Jorge is still looking at him and Jun hesitates. What’s he supposed to say? “You?”

Jorge follows his gaze and doesn’t answer. “Kat,” he calls softly, and their Lieutenant Commander’s head snaps around, molten murder. Jorge is undeterred. “You should rest.”

“I’ll rest,” she grits out, “when we have news.”

Until Carter’s back in commission, she’s in command. “Orders in the meantime?” Jun asks mildly, and Jorge shoots him a searing scowl.

Kat snorts. “You go through the medical check?”

“We all did,” Emile supplies. His blade is in his hand, turning over and over, and Thom, twitching two seats away, clamps a hand around his wrist and glowers.

“Put that away.”

Emile holds his stare for a beat; his eyes seethe. “Watch yourself,” he says at last, and slides the knife back into it sheathe on his wrist. Thom scoffs and moves another seat away, folding his arms and propping his feet up on a spare chair.

“Knives don’t belong in the medbay, Emile.”

“Keep your hands to yourself.”

“Stow it,” Kat snarls, and they sneer at each other but they have the sense to drop it.

The medics let them in twelve long hours later. Kat’s the first to charge ahead. The others follow, careful and hesitant, even Emile, and Jun drops behind them, a few steps back.

“Hey,” Kat says softly. She doesn’t mean for it to happen, or maybe she doesn’t mean for them to notice, but her entire stance shifts: one second she’s a defensive edge, the next a careful caretaker. Carter offers an effort at reassurance, a half a smile, but even with the relatively few machines he’s hooked up to Jun knows it was too close for comfort.

Kat knows too. Her hand drops down to the edge of the bed, silent, tortured, and Carter clasps it weakly. “I’m all right,” he says roughly. “Just a close call. Happens all the time.”

Their last team was on a mission that _happened all the time_.

“We never should have been there,” Kat whispers darkly and by the wary way Carter’s face twists Jun’s pretty sure he knows what Kat’s been up to on her data-padd for the last ten plus hours.

“Kat—”

“They knew,” she says simply. “About the other carriers. And they sent us anyway.”

“ _Why_ would they—”

“Our ships destroyed the entire force they had on the ground. Figure it out.”

“We were bait,” Emile says disbelievingly. Kat glances at him and shrugs. Carter struggles to push himself up on an elbow, struggles to seem more present and commanding, but he makes it through one movement before he coughs a cry and stops.

“Whatever happened,” he grits out, sucking in a strained breath through his teeth, “we achieved the objective.”

“Yeah, at the cost of a city,” Thom mutters.

Emile sneers at him. “You’d rather we lost the whole system?”

“Sometimes,” Carter says, teeth clenched, “we can’t save everyone. Just as many as we can.”

“All due respect, Commander, but we’re at war,” Emile says. “We win by—”

“We win by working together as a _team_ ,” Carter interrupts. Emile twitches. Thom’s trembling, murderously taut, and Carter catches his eye and softens his tone. “We stopped them from taking the system. That’ll have to be enough this time.”

“And what about next time?”

Carter’s eyes snap to his. “What?”

“What about next time?” Jun repeats dryly. “We follow orders and walk right into a massacre?”

“We do our jobs.”

"Is it our job to go in blind?”

“It’s your job to trust my calls, Jun,” Carter returns, and for all the pain in his face there’s also searing resolve. “They give us a directive and we carry it out. Sometimes they don’t give us all the facts. Our mission doesn’t change. Clear?”

Kat’s giving him a warning scowl. Jun bites back the remark. “Crystal, sir,” he says coolly.

Teams complicate everything.

“He doesn’t like it either.”

It comes from below his bunk, late in the night. Jun pauses, squeezing the racquetball in his palm. “What?”

“The Commander,” Jorge answers easily, a low rumble in the darkness. “He doesn’t like being kept in the dark.”

“That mission wasn’t meant for a team. They should have sent a solo operative.”

“A solo operative wouldn’t have survived that,” Jorge says.

Headhunters go on every assignment knowing the odds are stacked against them and they’re going to die. This is different. This is structured warfare, not suicide plays. “We should have known.”

Jorge shrugs, a low creak of the cot. “Not our call. We take what we’re given and we do what we can.”

“Right.”

“Have some faith.”

“In who?”

“In the team.”

Jun waits a long beat. “Sure,” he drawls at last. “Sure. I’ll do that.”

“Jun—”

“Goodnight, Jorge.”

Jorge doesn’t answer, at first. The silence is brittle. “Goodnight, Jun,” Jorge says at last. There’s more low creaking, Jorge settling in, and then – blessed silence.

Jun props his hands behind his head and waits. Jorge doesn’t speak again. It should be a small mercy.

It feels like anything but.

–


End file.
